Could the re-election of Donald Trump be another (scary) indicator that education is broken?

I am not American. I am told I should not care about the results or the 2024 elections. Or I am told “Americans voted, they deserve what is coming to them.” Or “This is actually how Americans are. We just get to see it more clearly now.” It would be so easy to justify what is happening now, an ocean away from where I live and from where I was born, if I had not recognized in these phrases the precise rethoric that got Trump into the office: othering, revenge and discrimination. I don’t want to be part of that, even if my heart aches for so many across the ocean who I know will suffer greatly in the next forseeable future.

I won’t point fingers. In my native country of Romania three corrupted and barely educated white men are battling a homophobic, barely educated white woman to become the next president. We have no ground to stand on to say anything about the US election. What do we know? And still … what I do know is that 45 years of communist dictatorship, of “the father of the nation” at the helm, of so called “voting”, when the ballot only displayed one name, of security services (that could have been represented by your father or sister) listening in and reporting on family conversations, of people jailed or killed, of books being banned and borders closed (to “protect”), harmed Romania in a way that made it impossible for it to bounce back in my lifetime and for the foreseeable future. So called socialists, individuals corrupted to their core, nepotism, functional illiteracy, this is the social and political environment in a country that seems to have never had a backbone. The few who want to fight for change are too few or too silent. Or … give up and run away. Like me.

But the home of the brave? The land of the free? How could this have happened there, right? And each of us have our own theories, without either one being the truth because who even knows what the truth is, right? But what if we ask ourselves: what is this here to teach us? When the shock of the result passed, I asked this of myself and the answer came to me almost instantly: the results of these elections, and many other things happening in the world, represent privilege running rampant, in a world where education is broken and has been for a while.

I heard this ridiculous theory that Americans may be ok with a promised dictatorship because they are so fed up with so many people “taking what is theirs.” When the nausea passed, I was able to understand why that might in fact be true. Americans who think this way, have never lived under a dictator. A privilege not many in Europe (especially the closer you get to mother Russia) enjoy. It must sound like fun and games to say you’ll make friends with the likes of Putin when you are (in the Washington White House) so far removed and so well protected. The Republic of Moldova, a country infinitely smaller and poorer than the mighty US, has lived under the USSR and is a stone throw away from the crazy dictator in Moscow. They voted like their lives depended on it. Because it did. To vote for the one who vouches to be “a dictator on day one” just because you feel your pocket is lighter and because he is not a woman of color or gay, is a dangerous game being played by people who have absolutely no idea what it means to live in any other form of government than democracy. To not care about your fellow citizens who are marginalized, who are suffering, who are looking for refuge from greater evils, is a mark of unimaginable privilege that seems now to be making the rules not just in the US.

If we are to look at this event as saying anything about the kind of world we live in today, I see the re-election of Trump, the choosing of everything that he so clearly stands for, as another (scary) sign that education is broken. That it has lost touch with reality, but more importantly, that it holds us captive to the past rather than gives us wings to fly into a brighter future.

To succeed in 2050, Yuval Noah Harari tells us that what we need to teach our young and ourselves to think critically, to collaborate, to continually reinvent ourselves and to know ourselves well. We continue to send our children to school to memorize historical facts without necessarily making connections that are relevant to them and learn from antiquated sources that increase their sense of privilege and do not help them explore a larger perspective. Very seldom, if at all, does our education include strategies to recognize propaganda from reality and facts, ways to stand for what we believe in and what feels right to us, especially when it is hard. We very seldom, if ever, educate ourselves and our young to see everyone as human and not as “other”, to keep history alive by sharing stories in manners that our young can digest them and hear them truly. We all know what happens when history is forgotten. And we are there today.

The way elections went in the US is not an outlier, it is a sign of the times. Look around at Gaza, Ukraine, Venezuela, Spain, Hungary, Romania and so many others. The only hopeful thing I can think of today is that song line that goes something like: it’s always darkest before the dawn. I can only hope, for the sake of our young, that humanity and kindness, humility and honesty, empathy and love will climb the ladder of importance in the choices we make socially, personally and politically. While this planet still stands us.